GeneTex, a leading manufacturer of antibodies and antibody-related reagents, is set to launch new monoclonal antibody against stage-specific embryonic antigen 5 (SSEA-5), a marker for human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) that may also improve the safety of stem cell-based treatments.
The therapeutic potential of hPSCs has been widely studied by the biomedical research community. However, the potential of these therapies is hindered by the increased risk of teratoma formation due to remaining pluripotent stem cells that fail to differentiate. Recently, a group of researchers from Stanford University published a report in Nature Biotechnology that describes SSEA-5, a novel H type-1 glycan antigen that is expressed on human undifferentiated stem cells. SSEA-5 expression rapidly decreases after differentiation making it a potent and reliable marker for undifferentiated stem cells.
The researchers developed a highly specific monoclonal antibody against SSEA-5 that was used in conjunction with other pluripotency surface markers to immunodeplete residual teratoma-causing cells in incompletely differentiated stem cell cultures (Tang C, Lee AS, Volkmer JP, Sahoo D, Nag D, Mosley AR, Inlay MA, Ardehali R, Chavez SL, Pera RR, Behr B, Wu JC, Weissman IL, Drukker M. An antibody against SSEA-5 glycan on human pluripotent stem cells enables removal of teratoma-forming cells. Nat Biotechnol. 29(9), 829-34 (2011)).
“This antibody exhibits high specificity for SSEA-5, a primitive glycan found in extreme abundance on all pluripotent stem cell types and a limited number of other primitive cell types,” says Dr Chad Tang, the lead author of the Nature Biotechnology paper. “The application of this antibody should be of interest for researchers studying the biology and induction of pluripotent stem cells, as well as providing a reagent to detect and aid in the removal of residual undifferentiated cells. The high fluorescent signal intensity exhibited by pluripotent stem cells bound by this antibody can easily distinguish these cells from adult cell types.”
GeneTex is pleased to introduce this SSEA-5 monoclonal to stem cell researchers worldwide. This antibody has been validated for flow cytometry, immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry.